Aggricultural and Pastoral.

Otago Witness, Issue 851, 21 March 1868, Page 14

Aggricultural and Pastoral.

jL-kacmriedgerof * -is,i one: of the main differences between the barbarous husbandry of fottaoaer periods and the improved husbandry. t>f the present day. All the agricultural ■writers of Britain and Continental Eu- . .Trope, ,down"to the latter part of last ceniiury, spoke of the most deteriorating, t courses of cropping in the same terms in l "%HiteH they spake; of the most amelioraprofound ignorance of ',stt'e\ power, of certain alterations and i certain successions to. improve the land! , and augment the aggregate produce ; and 3ience,"in spite of many valuable advances in the -arts of tillage*, in the construction farm implements, and in some of the great general . principles of agricultural science, they were utterly unable to indicate to their readers any such broad and short path to an overflowing granary as lies open to all moderately skilful farmers of the present day. Arthur Young was one of the -earliest agriculturists who tolerably understood this great subject ; and he, pushed and propagated it with all lis oharacteristic enthusiasm, and put it on> the foreground of a large proportion of his writings, and owed to the successful practice and. inculcation of it a main part of his proud and well-earned fame, Many able writers followed him ; thousands of the best farmers in England put Ms instructions to the test ; the whole body of enlightened cultivators throughout all the good districts of Britain j speedily heard of the doctrine of rotation, and assented to its importance ; and \ British agriculture, in consequence, suddenly acquired a greater accession to its prosperity than had ever before, even at j 4lh.e epoch of the drill husbandry, graced \ ~and enriched its history. \ ■ ■ JRhbumatism in Cattle is much more j frequent than in horses, and arises from the same causes as in man, or from the .same which produce common colds, and T3 particularly prevalent in cold, marshy, l>leak situations, and during great and •sudden changes of weather in Spring and .Autumn ; and is in some instances acute, .and in others chronic ; in some continuous .and accompanied with fever, and in others occasional or fitful, and indicated chiefly by stiffness and lameness and expressions of pain. It may generally be palliated, but can rarely be cured. The remedies for it are shelter, warmth, aperients, diaphoretics, stimulating embrocations, and anodj ne action both internally along with aperients, and externally along with the embrocations. Whenever lameness in a horse, after a careful examination, cannot be accounted for, or is found to .go off after exercise and to return again, it may pretty certain be pronounced rheumatism. Aphides. — Dr Lea^h divides this numerous tribe of minute insects into the two genera of aphis or plant-louse, and erisosoma or blight- bug — the latter genus comprising about one-fifth of the number of the species comprised in the former. They are known to the farmer and gardiner, under the common name of plantiiouse, blighter, or blight-bug, and they therefore require to be treated as strictly one group. The word aphis means in Greek, a bug, and is derived from a word which signifies to suck a plant ; and the name aphides may be regsirded as its plural The aphis causes many of the most destructive varieties of the mischiefs and desolations of plants which have long "been popularly termed blights. There are twelve or thirteen hundred varieties, -and some of the species inhabit several or even numerous, genera of plants, while other species are separated from one another in distribution among mere varieties of rme species of plant. But by far the greater number occur in strict appropriation of a distinct species of the Insect to .'one exclusive species of plant. Several generations are produced without pairing. . The female, after having paired, does not produce living young, but eggs ; the insects evolved from the eggs produce living young ones without pairing ; all "the young of successive generations, till the approach of pairing time, are females ; and in the Autumn, or at the clpse of Summer, when fecundity is exhausted and pairing becomes necessary for its arenewal, some males are produced. Most of the many species which prey upon .garden or farm crops are readily destroyed %y aspersions of soap-suds, kerosene and "water, or tobacco-water.